Jonathan Alter has a piece up over at Bloomberg.com that makes a point we won't hear much about, because it's-- dun dun dunnn-- complimentary to President Obama, and everyone knows we can't have that. And by complimentary, I mean factual. The president has had a scandal-free three years (well, two years and nearly 11 months). Agree with his policies or not, you gotta give him credit for running a clean White House.
Non-scandals get no mentions because they aren't news. Well, they are news, but they're not newsworthy enough to spotlight during 24/7 news cycles in the so-called "liberal" (read: corporate) media. Too pleasant, too positive, not sexy enough, not ratings-grabby enough.
But there's one thing this scandal-lessitude is: Laudable:
[President Obama] has one asset that hasn’t received much attention: He’s honest. [...] How did we end up in such a scandal-less state? [...]
For starters, the tone is always set at the top. Obama puts a premium on personal integrity, and with a few exceptions (Tim Geithner’s tax problems in 2009) his administration tends to fire first and ask questions later. ... In several other cases, the decision to give staffers accused of wrongdoing the boot was made within hours, taking the air out of any possible uproar. [...]
The vigilance about wrongdoing has worked better when it comes to oversight of the $787 billion stimulus program. The money might not always have been spent on the right things. But a rigorous process supervised by Vice President Joe Biden, and made transparent with the help of recovery.gov, has prevented widespread fraud and abuse. [...]
[T]he ultimate explanation can be found at the top. ...Obama set a record earlier this month for most days without a scandal of any president since 1977.
Alter also has a delightful Darrell Issa mention.
Gee, for being such an evil Kenyan Muslim socialist Marxist unAmerican failure, President Obama sure is a straight up honorable guy. As Keith Olbermann likes to say about Countdown, we call this "our little miracle."
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